A song comes to us with a blend of three complementary ingredients: lyrics, melody and harmonic structure (chords). Each of these essentials supports the others, so while the lyrics may often directly refer to a particular feeling or emotion, the melody can actually help to emphasize or even embody that sensation. The chords contextualize things further by defining and establishing major and minor key relationships—the exact same melody can be made to sound either happy or sad, depending on which notes surround and support it.

It all sounds very complicated, and it certainly can be, but the act of songwriting can also be fundamentally broken down into two simple phases: Capture and craft.

Tools at the ready—anywhere, anytime

The first stage begins with allowing all of your ideas and inspirations to flow freely, encouraging them to come into being without judgment or expectation. Each new line or musical phrase may suggest another and then another, until you’ve filled the room with all of these wonderful ‘butterflies’ of invention and creativity. Along the way, you may employ a wide variety of ‘nets’ to gently capture them.

Songs are often like long-lost friends who show up unannounced while you’re in the middle of something else. You’re always very excited to see them, but the timing can be a bit of an issue. The key word here is readiness—having the tools you need at hand when you’re struck by the lightning of creativity. Have a note pad at the ready, and pencils or markers, highlighters—the quicker you write down a good idea, the more likely you are to keep it and to build on it. I usually write on an acoustic guitar. If that’s what you do, too, make sure yours is in tune, with good strings, ready to inspire you.

You won’t always have your best ideas come to you while you’re conveniently sitting at your desk. To capture a musical idea, anywhere, anytime, carry with you a pocket-sized digital recorder. Don’t neglect to check the batteries, the memory card, or the internal memory, so that you can dictate a lyric or hum a melody whenever inspiration comes to you.

If you have a smart phone, load it up with apps to record, apps to take notes... Songwriting is a guerrilla operation—one must be patient, but prepared to act quickly. Having even the most rudimentary record of this moment can make the difference between that tiny creative encouragement becoming the best song you ever wrote, or just another one that got away.

I knew a songwriter several years ago who received a Nikon digital camera as a gift. This particular model included audio recording capabilities. He carried it with him everywhere. To my knowledge, I don’t think he ever took a single picture with it. But it was filled with song ideas, arrangement snippets, found sounds, lyrics and poems…little audio finger-paintings, if you will. The artist finds a way!

The muse comes calling

Sometimes, there’s a nibble. A chord change or a musical vibe might catch my attention or take over. I fall under its spell and delve deeper into it, playing it over and over in an endless loop. I begin singing along and exploring the varying sonorous textures that are suggested by the union of my musical sense and my subconscious mind.

At this point, I try to sing the most beautiful and unique melody I can uncover. Even though I don’t know what all of the chords will be yet, I’m singing over what is there, because the very melody that I’m singing could suggest what the next move is.

Let’s start out, for example, by playing a simple C chord for a measure, followed by an E minor chord for another measure. After a while, you might begin singing a G “Ooooh” over the C chord and rising to a B over the E minor. Return to the G over the C chord, falling to an E over the E minor... Back and forth: “Ooooh, ooooh. Ooooh, ooooh...”

Eventually, a melodic turn may be in conflict with what you’re currently playing, suggesting a new chord. Let’s say you want to hear a G note, followed by a note of G# and then an A. That’s probably not going to work over the present chords, so you search through a variety of combinations until you arrive at the solution that sounds best to you. In this case, it might be a C chord, followed by an E7 and then an A minor. Suddenly, you’re in a whole new place. By simply following our melody, you’ve wandered off the beaten path and are now finding your way instinctively.

Getting acquainted

So, where can you go next? Continue playing through the progression, still singing along, all the way up to that creative ‘cliff’ where you had left off. This hypnotic, cyclical approach places the song “under your hands”; you become more comfortable playing and singing these inspirations, allowing your mind to roam. This often gives the next solution a better chance to present itself.

Along the way, certain words or images may concurrently begin emerging from seemingly nowhere, giving further shape and focus to your otherwise rudimentary utterances. Vowels are significant: As you sing along, you can try moving from “Ooooh” to “Aaaay” or “Eeee”, for example. Listening to the sonorous quality of these and other vowel shapes can further suggest lyrical snippets or additional melodic ideas... the point is to keep walking down that musical trail and see what else is there to be discovered.

Stopping time

If you’re lucky, you may arrive at a big “Eureka!” moment, or you may just run out of steam... In either case, this is the place to whip out that smart phone and record what you do have so far. Got lyrics? Write those down too! Just a chord and a rhythm? Fine. Hit Record. A bunch of stuff in your DAW? Hit Save and render a rough mix. Like a page with a folded corner, your process can be frozen in place until your next opportunity to return to it.

Neil Young, only one among many artists who feel that way, has long embraced the notion that most of his songs be not only born from but completed in this initial flurry of activity. It obviously doesn’t always happen that way, but his stated intent is that within that early burst of inspiration lies something very special that’s also quite fragile. You can find a great interview online, wherein Young discusses this concept in the writing of his song “Like A Hurricane”.

Singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman once said that as soon as a song idea began to take shape, his goal was to then finish the song before his wife came home, so he could show it to her. In the book Written In My Soul (a collection of interviews with many great songwriters, which I very highly recommend: www.amazon.com/Written-My-Soul-Conversations-Songwriters/dp/0809246503) Himmelman’s father-in-law Bob Dylan says, “All you know is that it’s a mood piece, and you try to hold onto the mood and finish. Or not even finish, but just get it to a place where you can let it go.”

Modern technology affords us the unprecedented ability to pick up right where we left off, to effectively bookmark these works in progress, to subsequently develop them into something even better, stronger and more lasting.

Get it in writing

Now comes the crafting of the song, a stricter yet still passionate process. At this point I fire up my word processor—I use Microsoft Word. Aside from the spell checker, I use its Thesaurus. The internet is full of thesaurus websites and dictionaries of synonyms—pick one and type in ‘ubiquitous’. Word will throw the following alternatives back at you: “ever-present”, “everywhere” and “omnipresent”. It may seem a paltry selection, but I’ll bet it’s a lot easier to rhyme with “everywhere”....

These sorts of synonymic options are the writer’s key accomplice. They can help us to think “outside the box”, by offering unexpected twists in our flow. One fantastic program that helps this process along in a very “musician-oriented” way is MasterWriter (masterwriter.com), which offers a huge selection of writing and reference tools with songs in mind. Check it out if you find working in Word to be a creativity-killer...

Let’s say, for example, that upon revisiting the notepads and audio memos, you take up where you left off, playing through the chords and singing the same wordless melody. Only this time, you start to sing the words “Where were you?” sort of unconsciously, in an almost meditative way. You come to a place where you want to say “You’re Everywhere”, but you don’t want to use such an obvious, almost lackluster word. You look up “everywhere” and the word “ubiquitously” is among the many choices offered. Chuckle at first, but then you hear the word “Ubiquitous” with a melody in your head: D#, D#, F#, G.

After a little more time exploring these new options, you come up with at least the start of a song structure, so go into your word processor, set it to a 20 point font size and make a chord chart for what you have so far, doing your best to line up the chords over the correct syllables, etc.:

C Em

Where were you?

C Em

Where were you?

C E7 Am B7

Everywhere weren’t you?

C B7

Ubiquitous

C B7

Ubiquitous

You follow that with a quick recording into your phone, and you title both the .doc file and the memo ‘Ubiquitous 02’. Every time you come to what you feel is a point of accomplishment (the melody forms, the structure gels, or a bridge appears), you will continue to leave these sorts of signposts for yourself along the way, so that you can track your progress, or back up if you hit a dead end.

Charting your course

If you’re looking for a dedicated chord chart maker, one that lets you edit chord patterns and do key transposing, the program Song Sheet 5 (from dsbsoft.com) offers a few features that could make their way into your creative process. Within the chord editor, for instance, there is a “preview” function that plays the currently selected chord. If you’re looking for the next chord in your song, you can click and audition chords you suspect might be right, or just see what arrives from clicking through different chords at random. Or try variations on the chords you have and see if they bring any new ideas forward.

Sometimes we just can’t get our hands to play the music in our heads. Perhaps we habitually go to all-too-familiar chord shapes, or just aren’t strong enough on our instrument to accurately realize the music we envision.

Band-in-a-Box (pgmusic.com) is an excellent aid in this more compositionally-oriented method. Band-in-a-Box lifts the chord chart approach up to a whole new level, by not just previewing chords, but performing them from start to finish, complete with drums, bass, guitar, piano, strings and more, in a variety of styles. Type in your chords and away you go, free to experiment with tempo, key, and style. There’s even an automatic melody generator provided, to further provoke your own creativity from unexpected musical places!

A few years ago, I produced an album for singer/comedian Happy Ron, called Terribly Happy (www.cdbaby.com/cd/happyron). He had composed, arranged and demoed the whole record, complete with chord charts, lyric sheets and audio CDs, entirely within the Band-In-A-Box environment. This degree of organization is invaluable in the studio and could be immensely helpful to your songwriting as well.

Now, some or most of these tools are available inside many DAWs, including notation editing; there are also notation-specific programs that you might find inspiring, some of which contain composer-friendly additions like built-in sound libraries and audio recorders. Some famous examples are Sibelius (avid.com), Finale (makemusic.com), and Notion and Progression (notionmusic.com). I won’t say more about them because they’re not products I have experience with, but I’ve worked with a lot of artists who have drawn great inspiration from them, and I expect you’ll see more mention of them in upcoming issues of Recording. I will discuss my DAW of choice below, in the context of a different sort of compositional flow.

Bait & Switch

Band-in-a-Box can also be used to play an existing song, over which you can audition an endless variety of original lyrics and melodies, in a kind of karaoke songwriting approach. Sometimes, we just need to sort of trick ourselves into doing something different, to help break ourselves out of old habits that may have begun bringing diminishing returns. For instance, lyricists can also benefit from the tactic of “hanging it on another song’s structure.”

There is a legend (which may or may not be true) regarding the pop songwriting duo of Chris Difford & Glenn Tilbrook of the band Squeeze. Difford was the lyricist and Tilbrook wrote the music. Allegedly, Difford wanted to try a new approach, just to shake things up a bit. He first compiled the lyrics from a bunch of his favorite Motown songs. Then, he completely rewrote each one, still adhering to the meter and syllable counts of the originals, and subsequently turned them all over to the composer, without letting him in on it. The resulting album was their biggest seller, one many fans cite as one of the best in their catalog.

Another approach: Gimme a beat

Hip-Hop songs require a different method from those illustrated in our previous examples, because in Hip Hop the words almost always come after the music. So first off, you’re going to need a beat.

In this instance, a beat doesn’t just mean a drum loop. The term includes all of the loops, the samples, the chords and the bass, as well as the all important Hook, which is also referred to within other genres as the Chorus. With so many elements involved in the song’s construction, a writer can go from inspired to overwhelmed in a hurry.

There are a lot of DAWs out there that all do an amazing job, but when it comes to simplifying the process so that you can be free to create, I’ve found for my own purposes that PreSonus’s Studio One (presonus.com/ studioone) offers a great workflow.

Studio One’s intuitive, tempo-sync based environment keeps all of your loops, MIDI, audio and effects in sync with the song’s meter, saving lots of setup and ‘tweaking’ time. Its easy ‘drag and drop’ interface almost seems to fade into the background as you create and discover. Loops can be performed and edited with incredible ease and speed, then quickly exported by simply dragging them to the browser. Studio One is not unique in this capability—nowadays most DAWs offer such tools. But it’s the one I’m most familiar with.

Whichever DAW you’re using, gather a palette of loops and other sounds, and you can begin building a structural framework. Start by a laying down 4 minutes of a two- measure drum loop. Adjust the tempo until you’re “feelin’ it”. Words may already begin tumbling out of you from this humble start. If so, let ‘em flow! The rhythms, accents and other forms of cadence that spill forth can influence every aspect of the arrangement that supports your lyric.

Since you’re already in a recording environment, there’s no better time to get those rhymes down than in the heat of the moment, so reach for a mic. Choose a decent one that suits your voice, in case you end up with keeper tracks.

As before, just lay down what comes out. A great exercise is to loop 16 bars and record numerous passes. Maybe each ‘take’ brings you closer to what you want, or you can try out a bunch of stuff and go back through and edit it later.

Grab that Ubiquitous chorus we were working on earlier and follow your verses with it for 12 measures. Using E minor as your key, you can begin building the rest of your ‘beat’ by adding bass, keys and other instrumental loops, or perform them via MIDI on one of the virtual instruments in your DAW.

Much like a sculptor, chiseling away in an effort to reveal the image that lies underneath, you can add and subtract these elements in an endless number of combinations. Structurally, you can shuffle song sections, re-order lyric lines and verses, add breakdowns and bridges, try out intros, etc. In this way, the studio becomes your willing accomplice, rather than one more adversary you need to contend with.

Inspiring sounds

Now that you’re ready to flesh out your song and take it to the next level, you might want to look for realistic sounds that can inspire you. Guitarists can get that big-stage sound for styles like Rock, Punk, Metal, etc. from amp modeling plug-ins; your DAW probably came with a few already, and many more are out there. Even the free Apple GarageBand (apple.com/mac/garageband) has sounds that are perfectly suitable for commercial releases. Plus, you can get some of the hugest, gnarliest tones imaginable, riffing and wailing to your heart’s delight... without your neighbors ever knowing.

Guitar slingers with iOS mobile devices are also presented with some great writing options, via guitar interfaces like the Sonoma Wire Works GuitarJack (sonomawireworks.com) or the Apogee JAM (apogeedigital.com). These new interfaces connect via the dock connector on your iPhone or iPad, rather than older products that go through the headset minijack and frankly don’t sound very good.

Once you’re connected, you can open a multi-effect processor app like Positive Grid’s JamUp Pro and BIAS (positive grid.com) and get to rockin’! In addition to being able to play through its faithful recreations of many different amps and effects, you can also dial in your own tones, and when inspiration strikes, you can capture it with the built-in 8-track recorder and export your audio via email or file sharing. This could even be imported back into the hook of your hip-hop production, bringing you full circle!

Getting there in the end

Don’t beat yourself up on days when none of these tools work for you. There are times when creativity is calling a time-out. My mother is a painter. She once told me, “Sometimes you paint, sometimes you clean your brushes.” So when it’s not happening, go for a walk, do house chores, tidy up your studio and your computer’s desktop, back up some hard drives, play Scrabble (it will give you ideas for lyrics!)—even though you won’t be actually writing a song, you’ll still be working at it, just on a different level.

Over time you’ll go back to each almost-finished song, listening with fresh ears, tweaking a detail here and there, until you know it’s ready to meet its audience. When an audience trusts a song, they can begin to believe that it has a place in their own lives. They will let down their guard and allow you the chance to get inside their hearts. To move them. This is the sacred covenant that makes our efforts as songwriters worthwhile. This is the importance of capture and craft.

I believe that there’s an invisible line that goes from the mouth of the singer to the ears and heart of the listener and if that line is broken by a lyric that makes no sense, the listener’s attention leaves.

Of course, there are many examples of songs that make no sense and have been hits, but when you cite these as examples, I would ask: 1) Was the melody and harmony so killer that people loved it in spite of the lack of clarity? 2) Was it sung by someone so famous that anything they put out will become a hit? 3) Was the audience chemically altered so that each song and bite was better than the one before, no matter what they were hearing or eating?

I havetaught songwriting since 1986 and occasionally I’ll have a student who announces he wants to write an obscure song. And granted sometimes songs in films can be a bit generic so that the story takes place on the screen, not in the lyric. But even there the lyrics need to make sense. I find that thetwo most common reasons for someone’s wanting to write an obscure, ambiguous lyric are: 1) His craft is limited and he thinks he’s being clear when he’s not or 2) He’s not willing for the real story to come out for personal reasons.

There’s a vast difference between writing on two levels and being ambiguous. I believe songs should make sense when you first hear them. Then upon second and third listening, deeper meaning can be discovered. Ambiguity generally leaves the listener wondering what you actually meant.

All of this has been about the lyric. But needless to say, the melody and harmony (chords) are vitally important. They are the wavelengths that carry the lyric along that invisible line I mentioned earlier. Obscurity breaks the line, but a weak melody completely dissolves it.

As performers we can tell when we have a strong melody, compelling harmony and a lyric that moves the listener. That’s when the audience is very quiet and attentive. Sometimes they cry, and we like that too.

Harriet Schock wrote the words and music to the Grammy-nominated #1 hit for Helen Reddy, "Ain't No Way To Treat A Lady" plus many songs for other artists, TV shows and films. She co-wrote the theme for “Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks,” currently showing in 30 countries. She and her band were featured in Henry Jaglom’s film “Irene In Time” performing 4 of Harriet’s songs. She also scored two other Jaglom films and is starring in the current movie “Just 45 Minutes from Broadway.“ Harriet is in the process of writing the songs for “Last of the Bad Girls,” a musical with book by Diane Ladd. Karen Black wrote the play, “Missouri Waltz,” around five of Harriet’s songs, which ran for 6 weeks at the Blank Theatre in Hollywood as well as in Macon, Georgia. Harriet teaches songwriting privately, in classes and a popular online course by private email. In 2007, Los Angeles Women In Music honored Harriet with their Career Achievement and Industry Contribution award. For her performance schedule, list of credits and samples of her work or information on herbook (Becoming Remarkable, for Songwriters and Those Who Love Songs), her songwriting classes and consultation, go to: www.harrietschock.com.

After my last article Demo vs. Master Recordings, I was asked to share how one of my own songs moved through the demo stage to completion. That and this post are both written from the recording artist perspective (rather than songwriter pitching songs for other singers to record). This is the evolution of "Golden Rule," from my album LOVE . HUMANITY . METAMORPHOSIS …

"THIS IS IT!" The rush of adrenaline, hard work rewarded, that magical feeling of inspiration successfully translated into a complete, singable tune … You know the feeling you get when you've just finished writing a new song. Eureka, you've done it! But, you're not done with it.

At least, I wasn't done when I shouted from our piano in mid-afternoon triumph for all the neighborhood cats to hear. Even after the editing stage, "Golden Rule" went through several major revisions—the kind best made by sitting down with a trusted musical advisor (in this case, our producer) to carefully analyze a basic recording of the song. The changes made in this pre-production stage turned a pleasant but complex tune into an engaging song with a clear message of love and self-acceptance.

One thing we noticed in the first piano/vocal demo was that there seemed to be two different pre-choruses in the song—and each one appeared twice. This took power away from the composition by creating several different build-ups that never fully paid off. It felt great to play and sing those sections, but as a listener, even I got lost when I heard my initial recording. Where was the peak of the song?

Another issue was how the perspective of the song progressed. It began in third person about a struggling little girl, shifted to the girl's voice questioning her situation, and then to mine, empathizing with everyone who'd gone through the same thing. It seemed like an interesting story arc at the time, but I had admittedly come up with a narrative that was too confusing to clearly deliver its point. What was the punchline … and whose line was it, anyway?

After a hard look at each section of the song, we decided to stick with the first pre-chorus. I let go of lyrics I was originally attached to when I saw how much more powerful the song became without them. We also cut down the instrumental parts, keeping just a short vocal vamp and a quick instrumental build-up to the "bookend" outro. With so many lyrics on the cutting room floor, we no longer needed to give the listener as much musical "buffer" to process what was being said.

Still, I adored that other section, whatever it was. Those chords just felt like they belonged, and the statement "but everyone is special, everybody's unique / that's what they say, and I'd like to believe it" was only the key point of the whole song. A-ha—that was no second pre-chorus, it was the end of the bridge—the climax! Those words now mark the shift from third to first person as we continue into the chorus, "so I sing, soft but strong, 'there is nothing wrong with you.'" Sure enough, these few lines had also functioned as a pre-chorus, because the chords lead back up to the final chorus, only even stronger this time.

For me, transforming our demo in pre-production was the most crucial part of the recording process. Between tightening the form, upping the tempo, and putting unnecessary bits on the chopping block, we cut over two minutes from the song, clarified its structure, and made its core message crystal clear. Having settled on these essentials, we gave a revised piano/vocal demo to the string arranger and other musicians as we prepared to take "Golden Rule" into the studio.

Melissa Axel is an Artist Relations representative of USA Songwriting Competition. At just eight years of age, she was writing songs about the bittersweet journey of life, love, struggle, and inspiration. The piano-driven singer/songwriter studied at Boston's renowned Berklee College of Music and went on to earn her master's degree in Interdisciplinary Arts from Nova Southeastern University. Axel's new album LOVE . HUMANITY . METAMORPHOSIS is reminiscent of Regina Spektor, Norah Jones, and Tori Amos. For more information on the 17th Annual USA Songwriting Competition, go to: http://www.songwriting.net

(Source: Associated Press) The title of Vince Gill’s new album focuses on his instrumental skills. But the music more intently highlights another talent: songwriting. On “Guitar Slinger,” Gill concentrates on lyrics about friends and issues, turning out stories that are sometimes entertaining and often touching.

Some draw on his sense of humor: The title is a roadhouse rocker inspired by Gill’s catastrophic loss of musical equipment in Nashville’s 2010 flood. Others confront tragedy: “Bread and Water” is based on the death of Gill’s older brother, who struggled with daily existence after suffering a severe head injury. “Billy Paul” questions why a close friend took such a deadly turn, while “Buttermilk John” honors the late steel guitarist John Hughey, who worked with Gill for many years.

As usual, Gill’s guitar playing adds color to his songs, and he balances the difficult stories with those of love and faith: “Who Wouldn’t Fall In Love With You” is a beautiful love song to his wife Amy Grant, and “Threaten Me With Heaven” explores his religious beliefs.

Altogether, “Guitar Slinger” shows Gill utilizing a veteran’s craft to delve into truths essential to who he is. It shows how a superstar can age gracefully while continuing to sharpen his talents.

CHECK OUT THIS TRACK: “If I Die,” written with Ashley Monroe of the Pistol Annies, is an emotionally resonant prayer that balances sin and salvation in beautiful terms.

Vince Gill has recorded more than twenty studio albums, charted over forty singles on the U.S. Billboard charts as Hot Country Songs, and has sold more than 22 million albums. He has been honored by the Country Music Association with 18 CMA Awards, including two Entertainer of the Year awards and five Male Vocalist Awards. Gill has also earned 20 Grammy Awards, more than any other male Country music artist. In 2007, Gill was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Veteran singer Barry Manilow fears the art of songwriting has been lost amid the mass of modern technology used by young musicians.

The Mandy hitmaker loves listening to new music created using computers and drum machines, but he is adamant the devices are replacing the craft of penning simple tracks that can be performed on any instrument.

He tells Fox411's Pop Tarts column, "I'm very involved in the machinery and the technical ways of making music these days, and it is exciting for young people, writing music on their computers with loops and drum machines and making gorgeous, exciting sounding records.

"But what I miss is well-written songs with great ideas, wonderful lyrics, beautiful rhymes and wonderful melodies. I don't hear that anymore, I feel very angry about that. People are making great records because of all the technical abilities, but what I try to do is turn all that stuff off. Do you have a song when you're done?

"I tell these young people to turn off the drums and all that stuff, and ask themselves is there a melody and lyrics there? Can you just sing it there with a guitar or are you locked into all these machines? I don't think they do. If there is one thing I miss in music these days it is great songwriting. I think we've lost it."